Tag Archives: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues

By the time we did the Australia and Europe tours we had discovered whatever this thing was. It was not light, it was not folky. It was very dynamic, very explosive and very violent.
~Robbie Robertson

By this point, Dylan, Robertson, and Co. knew instinctively that what they were doing was right, in every sense of the word. If the Hawks had been a little hesitant in their playing back in the fall of 1965, the music they were producing now was stately, immense, compelling. The sound itself had a thousand precursors, but no precedent. It was, indeed, ‘very explosive and very violent.’
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited)

Dylan’s 66 world tour is the best tour ever… by anyone. I know you all agree.

The Bob Dylan World Tour 1966 was a concert tour undertaken by American musician Bob Dylan, from February to May 1966. Dylan’s 1966 World Tour was notable as the first tour where Dylan employed an electric band backing him, following his “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The musicians Dylan employed as his backing band were known as The Hawks; they subsequently became famous as The Band. The 1966 tour was filmed by director D. A. Pennebaker. Pennebaker’s footage was edited by Dylan and Howard Alk to produce a little-seen film, Eat the Document, an anarchic account of the tour. Drummer Mickey Jones also filmed the tour with an 8mm home movie camera. Many of the 1966 tour concerts were recorded by Columbia Records. These recordings produced one official album, the so-called “Royal Albert Hall” concert, and also many unofficial bootleg recordings of the tour.Dylan’s 1966 Tour ended with his motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966. Subsequent to Dylan’s withdrawal to Woodstock, he refrained from undertaking a major tour until 1974.~Wikipedia

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you

–

This reminds me of Kerouac’s “On The Road” – conjuring up a dusty character lost somewhere in America, or South America, down on his luck, wanting to go home and singing off with the bleak but also funny line: “I’m going back to New York City/I do believe I’ve had enough.”~Howard Souness (His 40 Greatest songs – Uncut Magazine)

“Yesterday I got out home with a quiet feeling that i would beexperiencing the standard selection of songs in this european fall tour that, although unchanged since the beginning of this leg of the tour, it’s a stellar selection composed of songs of one my favourite album: tempest! So i entered the ballroom with a relaxed mood, just like visiting the Gioconda in the Louvre, that you’ve never seen in your life, but, you know, it stands in your mind as a fixed image…the stage is ready and i appreciated the six big hollywood vintage lowpowered spotlights as crown from above. The lights went out on time and soon magic fills the air because unexpectedly LEOPARD skin pill box opens the show…”Read more from Claudio Manara over at Boblinks…